The End of the Scroll. Herold Weiss

is that the court tales describe Daniel as a man with “learning and skill in all letters and wisdom … and understanding in all visions and dreams” (Dan. 1:17). King Nebuchadnezzar appointed him “chief of the magicians, because I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in you and that no mystery is difficult for you” (Dan. 4:9, 18). King Belshazzar’s wife tells him that Daniel is “a man in whom is the spirit of the holy gods” and “light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, are found in him,” and that “King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers, because an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems were found in this Daniel” (Dan. 5:11-12). In line with these characterizations, the ultimate accolade is given by the angel sent to give Daniel an explanation for the delay of Jeremiah’s prophecy that after seventy years Israel’s fortunes would be restored (Dan. 9:2). He tells Daniel, “O Daniel, I have come out to give you wisdom and understanding … to tell it to you, for you are greatly beloved” (Dan. 9:23). That he is “greatly beloved” by God is repeated twice by the angel (Dan. 10:11, 19). Then. when presidents and satraps, out of envy, seek for a legitimate accusation against him “they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful, and no error or fault was found in him” (Dan. 6:4). They, therefore, set up a trap as a means to accuse him of disloyalty to the king and send him to the den of lions. When Darius, after having anxiously spent the night unable to sleep, in the early morning calls on Daniel in the lion’s den, he answers, “My God sent his angel to shut the lion’s mouths, and they have not hurt me, because I was found blameless before him, and also before you, O king” (Dan. 6:22). These descriptions and this claim would be considered gratuitously self-serving in the writings of any author. They can only be taken for what they are when one understands that they were made by another person who is trying to establish his own credentials through Daniel’s reputation. All indications point out that Daniel was written pseudonymously.

      Like in other pseudonymous texts, e.g. First Enoch, Baruch and Ezra, in Daniel are found also the usual devices used by authors impersonating a famous ancestor. Prominent among them is the accounting of past history as prediction, that is vaticinia ex eventu. In every case the accuracy of their “predictions” comes to an end at the time when the author is writing. Whenever the author writes about events in his actual future the descriptions are nebulous, and in many cases prove not to be what actually happened. Another characteristic is the need for the visionary to seal the vision because it does not concern his own times. It has to do with what will happen much later, at the time of the end, that is, at the time when the actual author is writing. Thus, the interpreting angel tells Daniel, “Seal up the vision, for it pertains to many days hence” (Dan. 8:26), or that the vision tells “what will befall your people in the latter days” (Dan. 10:14). The author, of course, thinks that those days have arrived. “Predicting” ominous events of the recent past, the angel warns Daniel, “the end is not yet at the time appointed” (Dan. 11:27). This means that the author is writing about a present that is just short of the time of the end for the benefit of his contemporaries. Thus, the past history presented as what Daniel “predicted” would happen between his time in Babylon, around 580-537 B.C.E., and the author’s actual time in Jerusalem, around 167-164 B.C.E., serves to guarantee the authority of the information that the author presents as the solution to the crisis being experienced by his contemporaries.

      Another device in common use is to have the ancient worthy confess that when he received the vision, or the angel’s interpretation of it, he was troubled and confused. In the case of Daniel, after the angel had interpreted the vision for him, he confessed, “I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days, then I rose and went about the king’s business; but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it” (Dan. 8:27). After the angel “swore by him who lives for ever” that the holy people would be persecuted only “for a time, two times and half a time” and then Michael would arise to put an end to their suffering and reward them with resurrection, Daniel says, “I heard, but I did not understand” (Dan. 12:8). In another occasion, he says, “As for me, Daniel, my thoughts greatly alarmed me, and my color changed; but I kept the matter in my mind” (Dan. 7:28). In other words, full understanding of the vision will be possible at the time of the end, that is to say the author’s time. Both the sealing of the vision, and the lack of its understanding when received “by Daniel in Babylon,” only serves to explain why the “prediction” was not known until now, the author’s time.

      Further evidence that the book offers vaticinia ex eventu is the designation of the dreams or visions as mysteries (Dan. 2:19, 22, 27, 29, 47). As pointed out earlier, the way this word was meant in antiquity is not the way in which it is used in modern times. In antiquity a mystery was discrete information not available to the public at large. It was, in fact, not available on the basis of human abilities to discover things or solve problems. It was, however, within reach of human comprehension. It was information that was privately revealed to the elect few who had been judged worthy by God. Access to a mystery was gained by contact with those who already possessed it. In other words, a mystery was esoteric knowledge. It is because knowledge of a mystery depends on its having been revealed by a divine agent, that we now describe a text that makes use of this device as an apocalypse, and this literary genre as apocalypticism. This is a Greek word composed of apo, out of, and kalupto, to cover, to hide. What has been revealed has been taken out of hiding, what covered it has been removed. The author of an apocalypse has a revelation of divine origin for his contemporaries. To give his revelation ultimate validity, he introduces it with confirming authority by “predicting” events that have already taken place.

      Also to be considered in terms of the formal characteristics of the book, is the language and identity of the pseudonymous author. Daniel contains two kinds of materials. One section consists of stories about Daniel and his companions in the courts of pagan kings, told by an anonymous narrator in the third person (chapters 1 – 6). Another contains visions which Daniel relates in the first person (chapters 7 – 12). Besides, the book was written in two languages:1:1 – 2:4a, and 8 – 12 in Hebrew, and 2:4b – 7:28 in Aramaic; but the languages do not match the division of the material according to their contents. Besides, the Greek translation of Daniel in the Septuagint has a prayer of Azariah (Abednego) and the Song of the Three Young Men added to chapter 3. The stories of Susana and of Bel and the Dragon, not found in the Hebrew canon of Scripture, also appear as separate units in the Septuagint. These additions to the Hebrew-Aramaic contents suggest that the text was edited putting together separate pieces, a process that continued for some time and gave rise to different recencsions of the text. That the compilation of existing materials in different languages was done by editors is also suggested by the presence of different visions with idiosyncratic details dealing with the same historical period. Most likely, by this means the editors indicated that by itself one telling of a vision does not exhaust the message being conveyed. Even multiple allegorical versions of an event may not quite capture its significance. Thus, the publication of different versions of apocalyptic visions was not intended to give information. The visions were meant to spark the imagination, and to awake desires that would bring about specific behaviors. The different descriptions of the same event open up horizons for understanding. This characteristic of the text has allowed readers of Daniel in later times to favor a particular version of the story in order to concoct scenarios that fit their own historical circumstances and thus identify their own time as the time of the end.

      It is generally agreed that the “author” of Daniel were scribes in Jerusalem who edited preexisting materials. Their handling of the text also gave the text thematic unity. Their work, however, also makes it difficult to take at face value the details of the court tales. Besides the length of time involved, covering the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Darius the Mede and Cyrus, there are no historical records of a Darius the Mede. The Persian Darius who succeeded Cyrus was not from Media. Fundamentalists who have attempted to find Darius the Mede in the historical record have relied on anachronistic arguments from silence that prove nothing. Accounts of past events in antiquity were not primarily concerned to establish what had actually taken place. They tell the past with a specific agenda in mind, with either moral or political implications. Daniel is no exception. This text is not a historical but a theological work.

      Reading Daniel Theologically